He dropped the chain on the floor with a loud clank that made her jump.

“Need more chain. Don’t you go anywhere.”

She turned her head and kept her focus on his long strides, the way the muscles rippled across his back when he rolled his shoulders. She couldn’t look at the pile of chain on the floor. She couldn’t look at the weird device he was apparently going to chain her to—unless this was just some kind of mind-fuck. She wouldn’t put it past him.

God, was he really going to chain her to that thing?

By the time he returned with another length of gleaming chain her legs were shaking. He let it fall to the floor, and the sound made her jump again, even though she knew to expect it. Oh yeah, if this was mind-fuck he knew exactly what he was doing.

He came up to her and smoothed her hair with gentle fingers. “You scared, sugar?”

She nodded. “I’d have to be crazy not to be.”

“That’s my good girl,” he said. “Don’t think you’re not exactly where I want you.” He pulled back and winked at her.

“Goddamn it, Jamie,” she muttered.

“Yeah, right where I want you.” He leaned in closer, brushed a kiss over her cheek, whispered, “I kinda like it when you cuss at me sometimes. Sometimes. Other times it might simply make me do something evil to you. Since you have a little potty mouth, you’ll just have to see which way it’ll go at any given moment, won’t you, sweetheart?”

She wanted to cuss again, but she bit her lip to keep quiet. She wasn’t sure she wanted to do anything to make the situation worse. Or better, depending on how one looked at it.

“Fuck,” she muttered, turning away from him.

“What’s that, baby? I can’t hear you.”

“Nothing.” She ground her teeth.

Suddenly he yanked her in tight—so hard it rocked her off her feet, but his arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her against his solid body. Before she had time to think he thrust his hand between her thighs, his finger pressing into her.

“Oh!”

“You’re as wet as I expected you to be. You can cuss all you want, but you like this, Summer Grace. You like it a lot. But I want to hear it. Tell me.”

“Jamie—”

“Tell me,” he ordered.

“I . . . I like it and I hate it at the same time.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. That and the breathless tone of your voice, your confusion and your desire. Oh yeah. Makes me fucking hard, sugar. Feel how hard.”

He took her hand and pressed her palm to the front of his jeans, and he was solid iron under the denim, his flesh straining at the fabric. At the same time, he stroked at her swollen clitoris, making her groan. As soon as she began to squirm, he pulled his hand away then pulled her hand from his erection.

“Gotta get to work now,” he said.

“You torture me, Jamie. And yourself, from what I just felt.”

“Mouthy girl. But you’re exactly right. Isn’t that what this is all about for people like us? Because I’ve become certain fairly quickly that you are like me. I think that, new as you are, you understand the flow of energy within this dynamic, don’t you? You get it. So yes, it’s torture for us both, but some divine kind of torture. The wanting. The anticipation.” He moved back in again, kissed her lips quickly, drawing her lower lip between his teeth and biting down just hard enough to hurt. He whispered against her mouth, “I may create the mind-fuck for you, but it’s just as much a mind-fuck for me, having you this close and having to hold back.”

He pulled away and caught her gaze, watching her. A slow grin spread over his face, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him in silent understanding.

“Okay, then. We begin,” he said.

He made sure she was steady on her feet, then turned away and crouched to pull two pairs of leather cuffs—both wrist and ankle—from his toy bag. He straightened, then took one of her wrists, bringing it to his lips and kissing it softly. Then he buckled one of the soft cuffs there, pulling it tight, slipping two fingers under it, testing it to allow for circulation. He loosened it and tested it again before he seemed satisfied. He did the same to her other wrist. And as he buckled her into the cuffs her head began a slow, liquid swarming sensation, and she felt herself slipping into that lovely, cloudy place that was subspace.

He clipped the two cuffs together with a carabiner—a sort of metal clip often used in rock climbing—inserted through the D-rings on each cuff, then laced his fingers around the clip and pulled her toward the big red steel frame. As he moved her into position, straddling the center bar with her back to the tall vertical steel rod, the frame looked like some enormous, intimidating monster. Only the fact that it was Jamie preparing to chain her to the monster gave her any sense of safety. She had to concentrate to prevent her legs from shaking. With nerves. With sharp, jolting shocks of desire.

“Stay still,” he told her, and at that moment she couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what he asked of her.

He came back with a short length of chain and she heard him attach it to the hook. Then he took her hands and used another carabiner to clip her cuffs to the chain. Moving in close to her left side, he laced an arm around her waist.

“Hydraulic jack,” he said, squeezing her waist.

She didn’t have time to process what that could possibly mean before she heard a low, groaning hum, and glanced down to see him pressing one booted foot on a pedal on the floor. She heard the hiss of a compressor as the slack in the chain tightened.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said.

Jamie grinned, but he kept his gaze on her bound wrists as her body began to elongate, her arms stretching slowly over her head. Adrenaline shot through her system, along with a feeling of being utterly exposed to him. Powerless in the face of this metal machine, the weight of gleaming chains and the sheer force of the calm dominance he exerted over her.

He ran a hand over her ribs, her stomach, the sides of her breasts, his touch reassuring. Sensual, setting her skin on fire. If only he would really touch her. Put his hand between her burning thighs.

“Jamie . . .” She bit her lip, wanting to beg, knowing she didn’t dare.

“Shh. Be still, sugar girl.”

Finally, when she thought she’d be pulled off her feet, the hydraulics stopped. He moved around in front of her, keeping one of his black-booted feet on either side of the center bar, and a hand at her waist.

“You look unbelievably beautiful like this,” he murmured.

He ran his hands over her sides, pausing to pinch the skin at her waist a little, then over her breasts, spreading his big hands over them. She tried to arch into his touch, but she was stretched tight, almost having to go up on her toes in her high shoes. He pressed on her nipples with his fingers, then he took them between his fingertips and drew them out, pinching a little, then pressed again. The sensation was one she hadn’t experienced before, the pressing, pulling and pinching painful, and all of it pure pleasure. She closed her eyes and tuned in to the sensations. The pressure hurt, more and more as he pressed harder and harder, the pinching and pulling gradually getting harder, too, but the pleasure grew along with the pain. From some distant place she was vaguely aware of her body undulating a little in the chains—as much as it was able to—and of her own panting breath, the small sighs escaping her when something really hurt. When he stopped her eyes fluttered open, and she only had half a moment to focus before he slipped around behind her, with a small kiss brushed across her cheek.

She stood quietly through long moments of silence, but already she was deep enough in that lovely, floaty headspace that she was able to exist in the moment, simply waiting for whatever would come next.

She sensed the cool metal before the chain links ever touched her skin, then he wrapped the heavy chain around her waist. She shivered with the most exquisite desire. With a small chill from the cold chain. And oh God, she was sinking into this—into whatever he was doing to her. Whatever he wanted to do. When he used more of the carabiners to clip another chain onto the one around her waist she stood in patient silence as he crossed them over her stomach, drew them up over her shoulders and crossed them once more over her back, clipping them there. And even though these chains were purely decorative, doing nothing to actually bind her, they made her feel something entirely different.